Tuesday

Apr 3, 2018 at 12:01 AM

The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority's Policy Advisory Committee met for its monthly meeting on Thursday, March 29. The primary focus of the meeting was to finalize a draft of its Communication and Engagement plan.

However, in a brief discussion on questions fielded to them from IWVGA Water Resources Manager Steve Johnson, PAC members expressed that, after ten months of meetings, many of them are still unclear on what exactly the PAC's purpose entails.

Johnson had sent an email to PAC chairperson Donna Thomas stating that he was not able to attend many of the PAC meetings, but that he valued their contributions. He presented them with three questions for them to review and respond to.

The first question said, "To comply with the SGMA [Sustainable Groundwater Management Act] GSP [Groundwater Sustainability Plan], what are the 'deliverable documents' (written) needed from the PAC? Review of SGMA and providing a list for IWVGA review and approval is a possible path."

PAC members expressed confusion in how they should respond to this. They stated that their understanding was that the only deliverable documents coming from them should be documents tasked to them by the IWVGA board of directors or by Johnson himself. Johnson's question made them wonder if they were to have a more active role in proposing tasks, an endeavor they've been timid about ever since their September meeting where they tried to propose discussion topics and were told by IWVGA legal counsel to only discuss tasks IWVGA had assigned to them.

The events of that September meeting revealed that many of the PAC members believed their role would be more active, where PAC members would be writing recommendations for how IWVGA could create its groundwater sustainability plan. Meanwhile, it appeared that IWVGA staff had a more passive role envisioned for the PAC, with IWVGA and the Water Resources Manager writing policy and then the PAC reviewing it once tasked to do so.

Kern County planning director Lorelei Oviatt has been sitting on the PAC board and leading many of the discussions at recent PAC meetings, with PAC member comments generally directed towards her as the hub of conversation. During the discussion on Johnson's questions, she stated that her idea of the PAC is that it exists to review, and potentially offer alternatives to, policy created by IWVGA and the Water Resources Manager.

PAC member Nick Panzer responded, "A clarification, Lorelei, I get the impressions from comments I think I've heard from you two or three times this evening that we are to review policy proposals prepared from someone else."

"Yes, the Water Master [Water Resources Manager] provides them, that's always been clear. We're not supposed to be generating anything. He's supposed to prepare the plan, that's what he's being paid to do," Oviatt said.

Panzer then read from section 5.9 of the IWVGA bylaws, which covers PAC roles and responsibilities. Part of 5.9 states, "The PAC in consultation with the Water Resources Manager, shall be tasked by the board to develop non-binding proposals on policy matters pertaining to each GSP [Groundwater Sustainability Plan] proposals."

Oviatt said, "When we tried to do policy, the [IWVGA] board took a position that PAC was not to generate anything until the Water Master [Water Resources Manager], who they were going to hire and they have hired now to do a plan, provides us with something to do."

Judie Decker, a member of the public, said that doesn't fit with the question from Johnson, which is requesting deliverables from the PAC. PAC members Panzer and West Katzenstein stated that Oviatt's statement doesn't fit with what Panzer read in the bylaws.

Oviatt said, "The bylaws are just bylaws, the board gets to interpret. And the bylaws do not say that we're supposed to generate anything. It says, 'in consultation' under 'with board direction.'"

"But we have to be tasked. No one has given us what we have to ..." Panzer began to say.

Oviatt said, "And the board has already tasked the Water Master [Water Resources Manager] with the GSP plan, did you miss that part? The board literally tasked when they hired Johnson. They said, 'You're going to write the plan.' That's the part you missed."

She continued, "The board is not cutting us out. To be perfectly honest, the idea of us generating [policy] from nothing, I don't think that's going to be productive."

Pressed by Decker, she acknowledged that she doesn't know how this interpretation of the PAC's role can fit with the question Johnson gave to the PAC.

Panzer said that it was helpful to hear her thoughts on the purpose of the PAC, and suggested that the Water Resource Manager should be tasking policy to the PAC for review, and if he wants policy generated from the PAC then he needs to ask for it directly.

He continued saying that he's heard IWVGA board members say that they hired Johnson and his firm, Stetson Engineers Inc., to write the Groundwater Sustainability Plan, but then Panzer said he's confused by this question from Johnson which seems to be suggesting that the PAC should be proactively delivering policy.

Oviatt suggested that they respond by giving Johnson the finished draft of the Communication and Engagement plan, as public outreach is the one task the PAC has been directly assigned to. And she suggested that the PAC also tell Johnson that they are receiving conflicting direction and that they wish for clarification.

IWVGA is the newly formed Groundwater Sustainability Agency for the IWV groundwater basin. California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 called for the creation of GSAs to regulate California's groundwater basins into sustainability.

Five agencies with publicly elected officials came together to form the voting board of IWVGA. They are the counties of Kern, Inyo, and San Bernardino, along with the City of Ridgecrest and IWV Water District. Non-voting members of the IWVGA board are the Department of the Navy and the Bureau of Land Management.

Shortly after IWVGA formed, it drafted bylaws to give it structure. Part of the bylaws included the creation of two advisory committees: the Technical Advisory Committee and the Policy Advisory Committee.

The PAC was designed to pull together representation from different public groups who have a stake in the sustainability of the IWV basin. It features two representatives from large agriculture, one representative from small agriculture, two representatives from business interests, two representatives from domestic well owners, two representatives from residential customers of a public agency water supplier, one representative from Eastern Kern County Resource Conservation District, one representative from wholesaler and industrial users, and at least one representative from disadvantaged communities.

The PAC also has non-voting members representing the Indian Wells Valley Water District, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of the Navy.

According to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, IWVGA has until early 2020 to turn in a submit for approval its completed Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the IWV groundwater Basin, and then to enact that plan by 2040.

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